#+TITLE: White Trash
[[!meta date="2016-12-28"]]
[[!meta author="Tyler Cipriani"]]
[[!meta license="""Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License"""]]
[[!meta copyright="""Copyright &copy; 2017 Tyler Cipriani"""]]
[[!meta title="White Trash"]]

#+BEGIN_QUOTE
These are some random notes on the Book White Trash by Nancy Isenberg
#+END_QUOTE

* Taking out the Trash
** Highlights
- Starts with the American colonies late-1500s
- [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Hakluyt][Richard Hakluyt]] both Elder and Younger, propagandasists for colonization (Sir Walter Raleigh was friends with the younger)
- Idea is to cultivate the land on the New World with the poor and indigent of old world

*** Jamestown (1607)
- British colony where the ideas of moving England's poor to the new world were tested
- Horrible people shitting in the streets
- idle folks gonna idle, new world or not
- 80% of the original 6000 died
- tobacco became _the_ cash crop in 1609
- People became indentured servants to buy passage to the new world. If they died, their children or spouse became indebted.
- Orphan Children as property

*** Mayflower/Massachusetts Bay Colony (1620–1675)
- Puritans got a "patent" from the Virginia company, sailed to the hudson bay, established Massachusetts bay and the City on the Hill
- John Winthrop was an early and important figure (1630—...) and asshole
- Puritans were super strict and "obsessed with class and rank"
- In a family, children were treated as servants; nobody (laws, etc) distinguished between west african slaves, indentured servants, and children.

*** Bacon's rebellion
- Being further away from the center of power meant you got less protection and gained less wealth
- Women's fertility and the fertility of a new land were treated interchangeably
- Indentured servants' children became indentured servants just as calves became the property of the owners of the cow

** Vocabulary

- **Sumptuary** \Sump"tu*a*ry\, a. [L. sumptuarius, fr. sumptus
  expense, cost, fr. sumere, sumptum, to take, use, spend; sub
  under + emere to take, buy: cf. F. somptuaire. See {Redeem}.]
  Relating to expense; regulating expense or expenditure.
  --Bacon.
  [1913 Webster]

  {Sumptuary laws} or {Sumptuary regulations}, laws intended to
  restrain or limit the expenditure of citizens in apparel,
  food, furniture, etc.; laws which regulate the prices of
  commodities and the wages of labor; laws which forbid or
  restrict the use of certain articles, as of luxurious
  apparel.
  [1913 Webster]

- **King Philip's War**, sometimes called the First Indian War, Metacom's War,
  Metacomet's War, or Metacom's Rebellion, was an armed conflict between
  Native American inhabitants of present-day New England and English
  colonists and their Native American allies in 1675–78

- **Fecundity** \Fe*cun"di*ty\, n. [L. fecunditas: cf. F.
  f['e]condit['e]. See {Fecund}.]
  1. The quality or power of producing fruit; fruitfulness;
     especially (Biol.), the quality in female organisms of
     reproducing rapidly and in great numbers.
     [1913 Webster]
* John Locke's Lubberland - Carolina and Georgia
** Highlights
*** John Locke and North Carolina
- Locke authored the _Fundamental Constitutions of Carolina_ (1669)
- Locke was very pro-slavery
- Locke created a feudal system with different titles
  - Leet-men vs. serfs (Caciques and Landgraves)
- Was worried about democracy (he thought it was dangerous)
- N. Carolina was the "poor Carolina"
- William Byrd II (Virginian) thought N. Carolina sucked.
    #+BEGIN_QUOTE
    Surely there is no place in the World where the Inhabitants live with
    less Labour than in N Carolina. It approaches nearer to the
    Description of Lubberland than any other, by the great felicity of the
    Climate, the easiness of raising Provisions, and the Slothfulness of
    the People

    — William Byrd II, History of the Dividing Line, 1729
    #+END_QUOTE
- Lubberland was an English folk-tale about Lawrence Lazy in the town of Sloth in Neverwork county in the realm of Lubberland

*** John Oglethorpe and Georgia
- Georgia was founded as a charitable venture designed to lift up poor people
- African slavery was not allowed, nor was alcohol
  - Slavery disenfranchised poor whites by inducing them to give up their land to buy slaves until the slave traders owned all the land
- Land was allotted and owned under a "fee tail" or "tail-male" trust, it couldn't be sold or given away, it was given to the eldest son
- Nobody could own more than 500 acres in Georgia, no large estates
- John Oglethorpe assassination attempt in 1740, left Georgia in 1743, all land owned by 5% of the population by 1750

** Vocabulary
- **Villain** \Vil"lain\, n. [OE. vilein, F. vilain, LL. villanus,
  from villa a village, L. villa a farm. See {Villa}.]
  [1913 Webster]
  1. (Feudal Law) One who holds lands by a base, or servile,
     tenure, or in villenage; a feudal tenant of the lowest
     class, a bondman or servant. [In this sense written also
     {villan}, and {villein}.]
     [1913 Webster]
* Benjamin Franklin's American Breed
- Benjamin Franklin came from a poor(er) background, escaped apprenticeship in Boston and fled to Philidelphia
- He felt that America wanted/needed people and that breeding was a good thing, regardless of parentage, wrote stuff about that
- Experiments with the "natural state" pigeons and ants led him to believe that class would take care of itself by natural means
- Mostly western expansion fixes class
- The idea of "happy mediocrity" — I read it as having a wide enough country that folks can move to a place where they are not the lowliest
- Thomas Paine - _Common Sense_ (January 1776)
- Paine emphasies commercial alliances over class divisions
- Paine dismissed the aristocracy, noting that they could be ignorant and unfit or children of noble birth who were not ready to rule
- If aristocracy wasn't "real" – maybe not class either
- Both men seemed to think class would resolve itself because America
* Thomas Jefferson's Rubbish
- Jefferson seemed to hate the idea of industrialization and instead liked the idea of farming, gentleman farmers, the pastoral
- Jefferson was certainly more part of the traditional aristocracy than Franklin
- Wanted people to be farmers and believed in "raking the rubbish" to produce scholars from the lower class
- Often denied that there was class in the US to spite plain evidence otherwise
- Believed class to be permeable rather than inborn
- Believed that people could "breed" out of their class (Sally Hemmings children would be ⅛ non-white)
- Debated John Adams a lot about class issues, I guess
* Andrew Jackson's Cracker Country
- 1800 ⅕ of Americans lived on the western frontier (between Appalachian Mtns and Mississippi River)
- Squatters in the North, Crackers in the south: Both disreputable poor white people with no social mobility living in the frontier
- Jackson was a cracker president (1824, 1828, 1832)
- Davy Crockett (also — like Jackson — of Tennessee ) elected to the House in 1827
- Both men absurd, boastful, racist — Crockett, to his credit, was against removing the Cherokee (as was the Supreme Court). Jackson didn't give a single shit.
- Jackson dueled in the streets, killed Charles Dickinson in a duel. Left Jackson with a bullet next to his heart.
- Jackson seemed like the Trump of the 1800s :(((
- Universal Adult Male suffrage became a thing in the mid-1800s (1857 N. Carolina lifted the freehold requirement)
- The net result of all of this was that politicians need cracker/squatter/poor votes
